Share this:

Neocore’s multi-facted King Arthur II has a demo out, and the people from Paradox claim it’s about an hour long. An hour isn’t all that long, really, but should be enough for you to taste this all-encompassing fantasy strategy sequel. I’ve been rather to keen on playing this myself, actually, because the original game was one of Paradox’s strongest games of 2009. Gosh, was it really that long ago? 2009: when the druids still walked Albion…

I uninstalled King Arthur after I started calculating how much time I was spending repeating battles because of an intermittent crash after the battle results screen (I have had it for a year or so in the Paradox Complete Pack, but just gave it a serious go about a week ago).

I uninstalled Lionheart: King’s Crusade when I couldn’t find a way around a similar crash that would hit me during the seige weapons stage of the first battle. Reinstalled it when they changed the name to King’s Crusade and supposedly patched it to fix that issue. Unistalled it again when it crashed after the battle results screen of the first battle. All told, I probably spent at least 10 hours on that game (including forum-scouring for trouble-shooting) and never got past the first mission.

End of battle crashes are insanely infuriating. “Great, now I get to spend 45 minutes repeating what I just did perfectly.”

Doubt it, it comes out 26 hours from now (Unless that pre release prologue campaign runs similar, then they many have) however this is a Paradox game so I would give a good bet that it will come with there trademark bugs. (Then again, at least they do give there games continuous support, unlike some devs with shoddy releases)

“It is not bad performance and not too low. If it gets below 20 FPS than it is bad performance. 24 FPS is what a human eye sees as fluid and you watch the films in the cinema with 24 FPS – do you go to cinema again and again to see bad performance and horribly low FPS?”

Anyone who rolls out the old ’24fps is all the human eye can see’ needs to be slapped, and then they need to have their ignorant ass dragged back to school. The real number is closer to *240*, although anything above 60 is a relatively negligible difference.

24 fps argument is so dumb. The only reason movies don’t flicker like CRAZY is motion blur. Every frame leads into the next. Whereas in games, every frame is a separate frame with no lead into the next. That’s why films shot digitally often seem stuttery on pan shots while analog movies are smooth. Analog film just does the whole motion blur better than digital postprocessing.

I’m guessing the PR dude who made the 24fps argument was either super dense, or under the impression that their customers do carpentry with their faces.

@Dominic White:
Firstly the human eye is not the limiting factor to what you can see, it’s your sub-conscious.
And the “real number” for smoothness is in the hundreds or even thousands of frames per second.(Depending on conditions, black to white, white to black, and what research you adhere to.)

This is also the reason why people say that they can’t really “see” it, but they can “feel” it when something is off. Their conscious mind is not aware of what is wrong, but their sub-conscious is.

King Arthur was okay, but it wasn’t great. The main problem is that they sold the game as something it wasn’t. It’s not an open-ended grand strategy game like Total War. If you try to play as though you have some free reign or actual choices, you’ll get bombarded with stacks of unstoppable ghost soldiers. Instead, you have to play a -very- specific way, or else you’ll trigger unsolvable quests early or get overwhelmed with enemies you literally can’t stop. I recommend reading a FAQ and playing it by the numbers because every other option is wrought with pain and misery.

It’s sad too because it had so much potential. The battles, when the combatants were somewhat balanced, actually worked fairly well. The text-based RPG adventures were charming. I like the morality elements, and how you could go Christian or Pagan, Good or Bad (two dimensions). The map stuff, too, actually worked when the developers allowed it too. However, heavy handed events, terrible pacing, and awkward event triggers all severely constrained what you could actually do with the map mode. C’est tragique.

Unfortunately, the early stuff I hear about this isn’t terribly exciting. From what I’ve heard, they’ve stripped a lot of the grand strategy elements out right, and there is also a lot less subtlety to the morality mechanics. I hope it still ends up good, but I’ve never been expecting an out-and-out classic.

I’ll tell you what has my excited though.. Crusader Kings 2. CK 1 was a noble failure, largely because of developmental problems. Snowball Entertainment (IIRC), a Russian development studio, was supposed to make the game for Paradox. It was an early experiment in both Paradox as publisher rather than developer and for Paradox farming its engine out to other developers. However, largely behind-the-scenes difficulties threatened the project, and Paradox had to take over at the last minute. The game had great concepts and ideas but too many problems. It wasn’t as bad as EU Rome, but, even after many patches and an expansion, I don’t think it was quite as good as any of its peers: EU2, Victoria, HOI2.

Combining CK1’s problems with my personal issues with Victoria 2, and I was not exactly ready to buy CK2 on day one. However.. watching the Let’s Plays, previews, and AARs.. I’ve become incredibly excited. I think I’ll likely preorder it. Honestly, it looks amazing. Good Paradox have pulled it off? A game that’s great on Day 1? Let’s hope it’s true.. for both KA2 and CK2.

What was the game’s subtitle again? A Farewell To Frames or The Slide-Showing Wargame?

Honestly, with the first one still running choppy (after each and every patch) on systems there Total War Shogun II feels quite at home, I wouldn’t dare hoping that Neocore will make KA II significantly smoother in any kind of future. The game is otherwise good, though.

Paradox has always had shit day 1 releases, I bought SOTS2 on Day 1 and regretted it. Should have waited a year or so and got it for 10 bucks on steam. I’d give this a miss until some GOTY edition comes out at half price or something

Never played the first one, also on a major sulk with Paradox after buying sots2 (read into that as you will), but thought I’d give this a try.
I’ve played few more tedious demos than this, I struggled to find the actual ‘game’, the voiceover drove me to tears (of boredom). Dreadful.